Page 27 of Love vs The Ooze Monster!
“We have to go!” She urged. “There’s nothing else we can do. If we’re pinched by the cops, we won’t be able to stop it, at all.Please! Stay with me.”
His gaze ran all over her face.
“Stay with me, Boyd.” Mabel repeated and she knew her heart was in her eyes.
He nodded. “Alright. …But, we’re going to my house.”
Chapter Seven
Laying Down Heavy Sugar: (1920s slang) Paying a shit-ton of money for something
Boyd had laid down heavy sugar to buy a big home in the center of town.
It was exactly two streets over from Mabel’s boardinghouse. He had no idea how to furnish the mansion, so it was mostly empty. He was only ever there to sleep, so he rarely visited the majority of its numerous rooms. He’d never cooked dinner in the kitchen or sat in the parlor. No one else had ever come over. For five and a half months, the place had existed in a state of suspended animation.
Then, Mabel walked into the stately foyer and he felt the house come alive.
The same way Boyd had come alive when Mabel arrived in his life.
She glanced around, interested in the vast interior. The wooden trim gleamed with time-tested respectability. The electric sconces on the walls buzzed with the modernity of the age. The house somehow mixed the old and the new perfectly. It also had enough bedrooms for some criminally-inclined children, and a yard for a big, playful dog, and plenty of space for a gangster of a wife to work on her bootlegging recipes.
Hazel eyes took it all in and then Mabel looked over at Boyd.
He gazed back, waiting for a ruling.
“This isn’t just a house.” She said in a serious tone. “This is ahome. This is for a family.”
He relaxed some. “I know.”
“Why does a bootlegger need a family home?”
“For my family, of course.”
“You don’t have a family.” Her brows compressed. “Do you?”
“Not yet.” His eyes stayed on hers. “I’m working on it, though.”
She chewed her lower lip and glanced away. “If I sleep here tonight, it will ruin my reputation. I’ll never be able to go back to Mrs. Patten’s. She’ll say I’m a fallen woman and evict me.”
Boyd couldn’t think of a single downside to that possibility. “There is a gigantic slime creature melting people in this town and Rico is still running around someplace. You’re staying with me.” He wasn’t budging on that. “Honestly, the smartest play is to get out of this town, altogether. But I don’t think you’ll go for that…”
“I’m not fleeing town!” She interrupted, aghast at the very suggestion. “If we don’t kill the monster, no one will. I’m convinced you and I are the only capable people in all of Volstead. It’s why we work so well together. I excel at organization and you’re very efficient when it comes to bumping off anyone who gets in our way. Using force is always just business, with you.”
“Of course.” Boyd was a practical man. Violence was simply another practical tool in the practical acquisition of money and power. …Unless someone was trying to take Mabel from him. Then it was a fuckingpleasureto destroy them in graphic and elaborate ways.
“Except for Wilson Carmine.” Mabel went on, like she was reading his thoughts. Hell, she probably was. No one knew him better than her. “Killing him was very shortsighted, Boyd.”
“Carmine knew what would happen if he made a move on you.”
“He didn’t ‘make a move on me.’ It was ajobinterview.”
“He knew what would happen.” Boyd repeated without a drop of concern. Carmine had all but dared him to react, the second he tried to lure Mabel away. Every gangster in town understood how Boyd would respond to that idea. He’d made it crystal clear. Any man who so much as smiled at her got mysteriously dead.
Mabel wasn’t persuaded by his logic. “And now Sly’s gone, too. So, I’m going to have to deal with the truck depotandthe railroad head tomorrow. That’s another reason we can’t leave town.”
“So then you’re staying here with me. Pick any room you want upstairs. At least three of them have beds, I think.” Some random furniture had come with the property. “I’ll leave you alone, tonight. I swear it on my life. But youcannotgo back to the boardinghouse. We can worry about your reputation, after we whack the ooze monster.”
The discussion of her future plans would be very short, though. He wasn’t offering a lot of options.
